A campaign may be defined as several related operations aimed at achieving a goal (e.g., having geographical and/or temporal constraints). The campaign may be organized for a variety of purposes and/or causes (e.g., a political campaign, a charitable campaign, a religious campaign, a fundraising campaign, etc.). For example, the campaign may involve a series of activities such as publicity, fundraising, marketing, debating, blogging, podcasting, speaking and/or voting.
A supporter (e.g., a political party member, a volunteer, a devotee, a special-interest member, etc.) who represents the campaign may walk door to door in neighborhoods (e.g., to homes and/or businesses) to garner support for the campaign from others. The supporter may walk for miles and may spend weeks gaining support (e.g., raising money) and/or delivering media (e.g., lawn signs, goods, mailers, flyers, emails etc.) in a neighborhood. This can be a time consuming and labor intensive process.
For example, Jane (e.g., the supporter) may volunteer for the campaign of a presidential candidate (e.g., Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Barack Obama, etc.). Jane may spend many hours each day walking and/or communicating with neighbors around her and convincing them that they too should support the presidential candidate. Jane may keep a map of where she has walked before. Sometimes her walking map may not be updated accurately and she may walk down the same street multiple times.
Jane may also handwrite comments about experiences with neighbors that she has visited. Sometimes notes that Jane takes of neighbors may get misplaced. Jane may collect checks by hand from neighbors to raise money for the presidential candidate. She may manually submit checks every few weeks to a local campaign manager of the presidential candidate. Sometimes checks may get lost.
Jane may revisit homes of neighbors who have agreed to support the presidential candidate to deliver media (e.g., flyers, lawn signs, buttons, banners, collateral, etc.). This can be a time consuming process, as Jane may have to physically remember which houses wanted lawn signs and/or communicate this information to other supporters specializing in lawn sign delivery. When lawn signs are to be removed, Jane or other supporters of the presidential candidate may need to recall where the campaign placed lawn signs and pick them up to avoid littering fines.
Sometimes, the local campaign manager may not know where Jane has walked and may deploy another supporter to walk down the same streets that Jane has already walked. Valuable time may be lost through a duplication of efforts. Furthermore, information that Jane may have collected about neighbors she has visited (e.g., this neighbor Fred cursed at me and hates politics!) may not be disseminated to others.